Out-patients

(asked on 30th January 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department plans to launch its review of outpatient services; and if his Department will include in that review services for (a) rheumatoid arthritis, (b) inflammatory bowel disease, (c) psoriasis and (d) other immune-mediated inflammatory conditions.


Answered by
Stephen Hammond Portrait
Stephen Hammond
This question was answered on 8th February 2019

The Long Term Plan identifies the need to “redesign services so that over the next five years, patients will be able to avoid up to a third of face-to-face outpatient visits, removing the need for up to 30 million outpatient visits a year”. The work on outpatients is aimed at improving the patient experience, simplifying the process and where appropriate, enabling digital alternatives to attending a clinic in person.

The implementation plan for delivering the Long Term Plan and this commitment is in the process of being developed and will build on:

- The work hospitals are already developing in new models of care such as in Tower Hamlets Chronic Kidney Disease e-Clinics;

- The elective care transformation programme’s extensive work reviewing different models of outpatients across various specialties and the work to review productivity, capacity and shift to digital; and

- Clinical improvement identified by the Getting It Right First Time programme.

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